#fage

Keelin: so great!

Sage: the best!

Cami: but they tend to be a tad judgemental.

Hayley: almost punitive.

Davina: they are monsters.

Marcel: that’s why the seven of us formed a secret alliance to help each other cover up our little mistakes :)

Alleyway | Radio Silence | “Can you hear me?”

a little late but here's day 7

Sage because the girl deserves more and Sage/Finn because they didn’t get nearly enough in canon and Finn needs something to make up for all I’m, by that I mean Dahlia, is going to put him through this month.

Oh and Henrik lives in this AU.

—--

Sage always tends to meet Mikaelsons in alleyways.

It starts with the youngest when they were all still human before the creation of the monsters to be, when a young boy with still healing scars attempted to hide from the stares and was followed into the small gap between two buildings by a predator of a human sort.

Sage followed, and the man who had planned to prey on the boy never left. They were found by one of the boy’s older brothers, the other dark haired one, Kol who gave her an appraising look after he saw the body but thanked her after introducing himself and left with the younger boy under his arm.

*

A little over two years later she’s bleeding out in an alleyway not far from the first, choking on her breath as she regretted not checking for a weapon, alone as the man had fled when he realised he wouldn’t get his fun with her dying.

“Can you hear me?” a voice called, she blinked, the world coming into focus to find the second Mikaelson boy, Kol looking down at her.

She glared up at him, not sure why he was bothering in her last moments.

“Sorry,” he shrugged, crouching down to her, “See i have an idea but i need a test subject, if this works take it as repaying you for saving Henrik. If it doesn’t, you're dead, sorry.”

Before she could muster the strength to question him he pushed his wrist to her mouth and held her head there.

She died with a taste of iron in her mouth from blood that wasn’t hers. She wakes later to his grinning face.

An experiment he had explained, it was a moment of chance that he had smelt her blood and recognized her while he had escaped his family to muse on his lost magic. He had the chance to explain the basics of what she had become and left her a ring to allow her into the daylight before he and the rest of his siblings fled to europe.

*

She only met Klaus because Henrik had recognized her.

“Sage?” the voice called her from Alice, the young sister who had snuck out of the convert to see her. For a moment she had just stared, after two and a half centuries her human life seemed more like a dream than reality sometimes, until the mind caught up.

“Henrik, you look well.” she smiled at the boy, shifting Alice to rest against her shoulder, leaving the barley conscious woman to mouth at her neck, where she had already cut.

“How-?” He asked stepping further into the alley, before she could answer him a nd pulled him back.

“Henrik, mind introducing you friend?” Klaus asked, an undercurrent of threat in his words while around Henrik,, she wondered if he knew how much like his father when he spoke like that.

“This is Sage, she saved me back when we were human, Sage this is my brother Klaus.” Henrik replies, apparently not noticing the threat as he tried to step closer.

“Sage?” he asked with a charming smile even as he held Henrik back, if she was another woman it might have worked but his charm was far too much like the men she had grown up with.

“Just Sage.” she smiled, her father may have freed her from thralldom but she had no interest in keeping him or his name alive. 

“And how-” Klaus attempted to take another step in front of Henrik only to be nearly pushed over by him.

“How are you still alive?” Henrik interrupted and Sage smothered her amusement at the look of indignation Klaus sent his way. 

“Didn’t your brother tell you?” she asked but the look of confusion on Henrik’s and irritated realistion on Klaus’s faces answered that question for her, “Kol found me before you left, he said he wanted to experiment and as i was ready dying.” she shrugged, it not quite a grand beginning of a new life but she enjoyed her new life far better than she would have the Hall’s her father’s gods offered. 

“Kol!” Klaus snarled, she may have jumped at the sudden aggression but with Alice still plastered to her front she hid it.

She had been paying attention to the rumours about the Original family and it was a well known fact that either the two oldest brothers were at each other’s throats or tearing through villages together.

“Niklaus I'm positive he had a reason for not telling us.” Henrik tried to calm the now livid, Klaus gave her a look before turning away stalking away, forcing the younger to follow.

“Yes, his own bloody amusement” Klaus snapped but slowed enough for the shorter to catch up. “I'm going to ring his neck.”

She was relieved when the ranting faded, it had been a long time since she had felt threatened by anyone and Klaus Mikaelson brought back far too many memories of her human life. 

She took Alice home and in the morning offered her a choice of freedom from her vow and made a note to herself to avoid Klaus in all future opportunities.

*

Finn was special, even if it’s a few centuries before she finds out he and his siblings were Mikealsons. It’s a few years after her meeting with Klaus and Alice had left her side to enjoy the world on her own.

She first finds him in an underground bar and watches him, she can taste the power but under the cold, impassive charm that has both men and women staring, she knows the look of someone haunted, far too like the pretty young wives with controlling husbands waiting at home. 

Moreover she notices while he only leaves with men he watches the women with more interest, with a longing,  so when she notices him watching her more than a few times she decides to get answers on the fifth night and gets him to follow her to the alleyway just outside one of the exits.

“What do you want?” he asks before she has a chance, she smiles at the clear clipped accent that is far older than those around them, his next words relieving he knew what she was made him even more interesting. “I'm not someone you can feed on.”

“You know most of the girls you’ve been watching would have to have a chance at you.” she tells him instead drawing closer, she didn’t get involved with witches much, but she could almost taste the power he had from across the room, she wanted to see how it felt to touch him.

“I can’t risk it.” He offers as she sets a hand on his chest, the honesty clear in his eyes and the steady heartbeat under her hand, even with her close enough to bite he was unafraid, instead he looks at her with curiosity and something else.

“A child.” There's a story there, but she decides to leave it for now after nearly a week of watching him. It had worked up a hunger in her that wasn’t fading the closer she got to him. He was looking at her in a way she was unfamiliar with even after centuries alive she wanted more.

“But how about me?” the words slip from her before she had really thought them through.

“What?” his mouth hangs over a little in shock and she doesn’t think she’s wanted to kiss another as much before but still she waits.

“I know you’ve been watching me and  you know what I am, you don’t need to worry about that with me.” she smirks gently backing him up against the wall but giving him room to escape if he wanted. Instead he meets her as she leans forward. At first it was gentle but it quickly grew heated until she front her feet lifted from the floor and her back against the wall.

Kissing Finn, being with him even in the quiet moments just listening to his breathing, to his heartbeat, his eyes watching her. It was like finding a part of herself that was missing, some romantic part of her wondered if this, he, was the reason she woke up in that alleyway two centuries before.

She meets the real him in the alleyway behind the bar and didn’t realise she gave her heart to him until another alleyway a century later. He admits his deepest thoughts to her even those he doesn’t place on his siblings and she confesses hers, the ones she had kept to herself since she was alive, and yet none of it ever changes how they look at each other.

Finn tells her his first tattoo was of a Dahlia flower because he had still be concerned she would harm his brother of marking something of hers and had hoped a flower of her namesake would prevent that, in the centuries while he sleeps, and coloured inks become more popular Sage thinks of one day taking Finn to get the Dahlia coloured in golds and red, as far from the black hearted woman that keeps him.   

*

Rebekah finds her while he and Finn are in the middle of convincing a young man to invite them back to his home where his wife was waiting, she does reduces the amount she kills during her time with Finn, it’s not much of a hardship since their time is precious, instead to uses the time to introduce him to as much as she can.

To give him something to dream of while he’s trapped with the witch.

However that does mean she has little patience for any intrusions 

“Sage.” The tone is cold and she can hear the superior attitude that had always grated her nerves.

“Rebekah.” she returned with a far more pleasant tone, she had Finn she wasn’t going to let a spoiled little girl ruin her night. 

She isn’t that surprised to be recognized, Klaus had insisted she sit for him when it had come to his attention she was in town, Rebekah likely had seen the portrait. Sage had sat for hours while Klaus sketched and painted while staring at one of the Mikaelson family, Rebakah sitting in the centre of her brothers. 

“You really are as much a Harlot as I remember.” Rebekah spat and Sage wanted to laugh, as if rumours from people centuries dead and forgotten, just because the Mikaelson were still haunted by their past didn’t mean she was, she had leant to leave it behind in the alleyway she had died in. 

She moves from Harold’s neck to kissing the frown from Finn’s mouth at the words. While her white knight could likely bring an Original down with little effort it would be temporary and all that would do was bring her brothers after them.

“Harry here is taking home to meet his wife,” she called back, carefully shifting them all upright to walk away. “Not all of us are so reserved, perhaps you try to branch out,” she advised, as Finn slipped an arm around both of them, leaving slightly dazed and confused Harold in the middle of them and the walked away from the Original “just because we’re centuries old doesn't mean one has to stay so old fashioned.” she turned to wave back.

She chuckles to herself at the memory of Rebekah’s expression every time afterwards.

*

Sage had lived a long time to know a trap when she saw one, so the young lady walking alone on dark streets far too close to the worst part of town with pretty petticoats that screamed wealth catches her eye, she’s played that game. Not one to interrupt another’s game she watches as the lone wandered gained three followers and ‘took a wrong turn’ into a dead end.

She arrives at the tail end of the fight to three downed men and the lady flipping a knife she had clearly taken from one of the attackers, the lady sighed, one that spoke heavily of disappointment.

“I had expected better.” The words were spoken in an upper class accent but she has to give a second glance when she registers the voice, deeper than a woman’s by far. “Oh pardon, i didn’t see you there.” he looked at her for a moment. “Were you hunting them? you're free to feed on them now.”

It was only then that Sage realised there were only two heartbeats in the alleyway, and the power she could feel from man was only slightly lesser than Finn’s.

 “I was only looking for a good fight, perhaps I should have thought better than dressing like this. I should have known it would only lure out the cowards.” The man ended his statement by flicking the knife from his hand into the remaining living man’s throat, who died quickly choking on his own blood.

“Have a good evening.” the person bid her as they slipped away, it was spoken softly and if she hadn’t just seen and heard everything, she would have been fooled, with the veil replaced they once again seemed nothing more than a lost young lady.

When she confessed the strange tale to Finn later, her love simply groaned and laid his face onto her shoulder. “You met Elijah love, I had hoped to give you a proper introduction.” 

They never do get around to a proper introduction, Elijah leaves town that night and by the time they meet it’s been centuries since that night. 

“Good evening?“ Elijah smirks, his voice oddly soft, Sage laughs and Finn’s eyes are bright with joy.

—-

Freya she doesn’t meet in an alleyway, Freya she meets in the middle of the Mikaelson’s home, Dahlia dead and her love freed.

“You’re taking this all very well.” Finn noted with a trace of apprehension, as if he were awaiting the moment she would break her composure and attack him. Not that it would help. “You should be running and screaming in terror.”

Sage kept looking at him with that grin that said she knew something you didn’t. “Who says you’re not the one who should be running and screaming?” 

“Oh?”

“That’s what your mother would say; a good boy like you ought to run the other way.”

Finn barked a laugh at that. “A bold claim to make. You didn’t know my Mother, she wasn’t that kind of woman.”

“Neither am I.” Sage told him, wearing that same smile but with a hard look in her eyes. He could not help but believe her. “I don’t run.”

“I’m not asking you to.” He said earnestly, letting his own attempt at a light-hearted smile appear. “Just don’t go and summon a mob to chase me down.” His tone wasn’t quite right for a joke but Sage seemed amused, so he considered it a success.

“No need, I like the chase.” Sage offered him a new smile, kinder but still teasing – always teasing. Finn felt his face warm.

Back in 2017, I stumbled over Fantasy AGE, a 3d6 based fantasy tabletop RPG by Green Ronin. I was all in. It was the breath of fresh air I needed from D&D and D&D-esque games. I even featured it a few times in articles about games to try or alternatives to D&D. So when I heard there was a 2nd edition coming, I knew that I had to check it out! Continue reading Untitled